How Not to Get a New Truck

I bought my first new car when I turned 50. I left the dealer about 10:00pm with my Toyota Tacoma with 6 miles on the odometer. At 7:30am the next morning my wife backed into the rear fender in our driveway. The next day one of my clients backed into the front end backing out of her driveway. The next week I started working at St. Paisius Monastery every weekend for almost 10 months. Like a dope I had leased it for 6 years with 15,000 miles a year to save money on monthly payments. In 3 and a half years I had put almost 150,000 miles on it.
They call that "upside down". This is the last time it visited St. Paisius last week. Going through the Salt River Canyon, it became clear to me I needed that 1,000.00 brake job the mechanic was warning me about.


My kids visit us a few times a year. All of them use our cars when they come to visit. Sean is visiting during spring break. He is 17 and uses my work truck to go to Church and run errands. I've always had it in the back of my mind that if one of the kids ever gets in a wreck in my work truck, I'm screwed. I need my truck.

Sean left for Church at 6:45 on Wednesday evening. At 8:15 I got a call. "This is Sean. I got in a wreck at Gilbert and Main." I asked if it was bad. He said "Yes, pretty bad." I asked if he was OK. He said, "Yeah, I'm OK. The other people are kinda OK, the lady has a cut on her leg... here, the paramedics want to talk to you..." He was OK. Peggy was at choir practice, I called her and she headed to the accident. I called friends who drove me and McKenzie to the accident. Sean had run a red left turn arrow. The don't have those in Hemphill, Texas. My truck was on the sidewalk facing the opposite way he was heading, bleeding oil and transmission fluid. Tools, paint, mud, ladders, buckets, saws, razor blades, books, all were thrown all over inside the truck. The scaffold and drywall mud boxes were in the intersection.
I grabbed my crucifix and prayer rope and let them tow it away.

Here is Sean the next morning with his bottle of ibuprofen and the truck at the junkyard where we had to unload all my tools and stuff into my rental truck.

Here is the car that hit him. The driver walked away, his girlfriend went to emergency for stitches in her leg.

I told him cars can be replaced... at my age kids are harder... We thank God no one was killed. Sean said, "Thanks for taking this so well." I told him we need a new van too....

So, "Upside Down Red" is totalled. I have "gap insurance" which pays the difference between what I owe and what the truck is worth. So I walk away free and clear. We went to the Nissan dealer tonight and I bought my second new truck, a bit bigger and hauls more stuff. (No lease.) Soon the new Church at St. Paisius will be ready for drywall. I have a brand new truck that will make the trip now. God works in mysterious ways, I suppose.